“You were right, too, you know,” she said when she drew back. “The next time you head back to Chicago, I want to come with you.”

“Wait—really? You do?”

“Really,” she assured me, with sparkling eyes and a sweet, closed-lip smile. “At the very least, I’ve got to experience the travesty of a fifteen-dollar cocktail for myself. I hear they’re unmissable.”

Before I could reply, a bright, high chiming filled the air; Delilah had stepped up to the little podium at the front of the room, the wreath glinting in her hands. The mantle wasn’t on her shoulders anymore, because there was nothing left to arbitrate. The only thing left to do to close the Gauntlet was the wreathing ceremony itself.

“Don’t go anywhere, Emmy Harlow,” Talia ordered—and there was that smile again, that wicked marauder’s grin I loved so much, sending my heart soaring in my chest. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of missing it,” I assured.

When she stepped up onto the podium next to Delilah, I couldn’t keep a grin from stealing across my face at the thought that I was staying, and she was mine, that all of this was real. I was so beside myself with excitement, so giddy with pure thrill, that I barely heard any of my cousin’s no doubt carefully rehearsed ceremonial speech.

And then Delilah was offering Talia the wreath.

“Do you accept the Victor’s Wreath, Scion Avramov, and all that it entails?” she said, with a beatific little smile. Truly, my cousin lived for this ritualized shit.

“I do not,” Talia announced, in a belling voice meant to carry through the room.

As a ripple of surprise raced through the guests, my own chest tightened with apprehension; what the hell was she doing? And why?

Then she looked directly at me, and though I still couldn’t see her eyes, I swear I could feel the sly glint of mischief flickering in them like a pilot light.

“I cede the wreath, and all that it entails,” she continued, “to my champion, Emmeline of House Harlow. The next Victor of Thistle Grove.”

The low buzz of surprise blossomed into bedlam, a riot of shocked conversation that overtook the room.

“Can she even do that?” someone called out, and the uproar only heightened when Delilah nodded, spreading her hands to indicate her helplessness, and looking just the slightest bit annoyed that Talia was so decisively stealing the show from her.

Then Linden appeared beside me, grinning from ear to ear, her hand an insistent nudge to my lower back. “You heard your woman, didn’t you? Go get that wreath, tiger.”

“Did you know she was going to do this?” I demanded, my ears ringing tinny with shock, my heart pummeling my chest with such force it felt like it might jolt loose a rib.

“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised . . . pure Talia power move. And what’s more, she’s right to do it. You earned this, Emmy. And now she’s giving it to you.”